1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,760 At AMD, we believe in supporting transparent, independent coverage that helps customers 2 00:00:06,760 --> 00:00:10,360 make informed decisions. Ah, do you then? 3 00:00:10,360 --> 00:00:15,720 Well then, why the HE Double Hockey Sticks didn't you want to send us an 8Gig version 4 00:00:15,720 --> 00:00:21,960 of the 9060XT? Oh, it was based on regional market demand. 5 00:00:21,960 --> 00:00:28,300 Well, the last time I checked, we have a global audience, so unless there's no demand for 6 00:00:28,300 --> 00:00:33,660 a review in the region of Earth, I don't really get that explanation. 7 00:00:33,660 --> 00:00:38,980 No, the more likely reason is that you were afraid that we would roast your 5060 competitor 8 00:00:38,980 --> 00:00:43,940 as hard as we roasted the 5060, so you put off sending it until we wouldn't have time 9 00:00:43,940 --> 00:00:48,300 to test it before the embargo. But we can talk more about your shenanigans later. 10 00:00:48,300 --> 00:00:55,140 First, the 9060XT 16Gig promises to be the best value card with a 60 in the name in about 11 00:00:55,140 --> 00:01:02,300 half a decade. We're matching the 5060Ti 8Gig in performance, outdoing it with double the VRAM and beating 12 00:01:02,300 --> 00:01:09,380 it on price, which sounds great, but it also might not be the right thing to buy. 13 00:01:09,380 --> 00:01:15,980 And I'll tell you why after I tell you something you do want to buy from our sponsor. 14 00:01:15,980 --> 00:01:29,020 1080p is both the most popular gaming resolution today and the most popular excuse for shipping 15 00:01:29,020 --> 00:01:35,460 knee-capped 8Gig cards, like the 8Gig RTX 5060, which we purchased for this review since 16 00:01:35,460 --> 00:01:39,460 NVIDIA really doesn't seem to want reviewers testing those. 17 00:01:39,460 --> 00:01:45,140 But with all that said, the truth is, if you are playing games at 1080, AMD and NVIDIA are 18 00:01:45,140 --> 00:01:50,340 probably right, it is enough for now. 19 00:01:50,340 --> 00:01:56,000 But remember guys, this is the minimum spec for new AAA titles, and these are cards that 20 00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:59,100 cost $300 plus. 21 00:01:59,100 --> 00:02:06,780 Anywho, across our suite of games that exist today, the 9060XT performs admirably, but not 22 00:02:06,780 --> 00:02:12,860 spectacularly, keeping up with the 5060Ti cards which cost at least $30 more and discerting 23 00:02:12,860 --> 00:02:17,140 a commanding lead over the anemic 5060 non-Ti. 24 00:02:17,140 --> 00:02:22,660 It outperforms its last-gen counterpart, the 7600XT, by more than 30% most of the time, 25 00:02:22,660 --> 00:02:27,460 which is enough to highlight how truly awful that card was, but not enough to make the 26 00:02:27,460 --> 00:02:33,780 Intel Arc B580 look like a bad value, Intel's really standing out with their battlemage architecture. 27 00:02:33,780 --> 00:02:39,180 Of course, we would have loved to give you guys 8Gig numbers, so this is merely conjecture, 28 00:02:39,180 --> 00:02:44,420 but at 1080p raster, you can expect pretty much identical performance numbers because 29 00:02:44,420 --> 00:02:48,220 it's essentially the same card, sans half of the memory. 30 00:02:48,220 --> 00:02:54,580 If we find time to throw one on the bench, we will have that linked at LTT Labs down below. 31 00:02:54,580 --> 00:02:59,260 Okay, so what about the value proposition? 32 00:02:59,260 --> 00:03:05,140 Well, that depends. See, the 9060XT actually comes in three variants. 33 00:03:05,140 --> 00:03:10,960 The 8Gig one that didn't arrive on time, the base-clocked 16GB model, and the OC variant 34 00:03:10,960 --> 00:03:19,540 from Sapphire that was sent to us. This one has higher power draw and boosted clocks compared to 16GB non-OC cards, but 35 00:03:19,540 --> 00:03:25,740 other than that, all of the variants are built on the exact same Navi 44 GPU based on AMD's 36 00:03:25,740 --> 00:03:33,140 RDNA4 architecture. This new architecture brings a bunch of improvements that you can get a deep dive into in our 9070 37 00:03:33,140 --> 00:03:36,180 series review, but here's the short version. 38 00:03:36,180 --> 00:03:41,180 Big improvements in ray tracing and AI that bring these cards up to speed, almost with 39 00:03:41,180 --> 00:03:45,980 NVIDIA in non-traditional forms of rendering, and a host of other improvements that allow 40 00:03:45,980 --> 00:03:49,620 them to sometimes even beat NVIDIA in traditional raster. 41 00:03:49,620 --> 00:03:55,140 Despite its similar-sounding name, though, these new GPUs are substantially cut down 42 00:03:55,140 --> 00:04:00,780 compared to their bigger brothers, with about half as many compute units as the 9070XT. 43 00:04:00,780 --> 00:04:06,380 Interestingly they did this, which means we have half the memory bus width, but benefit 44 00:04:06,380 --> 00:04:11,980 from keeping the same IO and 16 PCIe Gen 5 lanes. 45 00:04:11,980 --> 00:04:16,620 That last point is key for gamers who are holding on to older systems where a buy-aid 46 00:04:16,620 --> 00:04:22,100 interface like on some of NVIDIA and Intel's cards can result in a measurable performance 47 00:04:22,100 --> 00:04:26,180 loss. Oh, there is one thing I lied about on the IO. 48 00:04:26,180 --> 00:04:29,900 Interestingly, this card only has three display outputs. 49 00:04:30,100 --> 00:04:34,380 Most of you declared this to be a non-issue after the announcement, but it is the first 50 00:04:34,380 --> 00:04:39,580 time that I've seen a $300 card in years that didn't have four outputs. 51 00:04:39,580 --> 00:04:44,300 I digress, though. To compensate for the cut-down die, AMD bumped up the clock speed so that you'll get a bit 52 00:04:44,300 --> 00:04:49,580 more than literally half of the performance of the 9070XT, which is also why the card 53 00:04:49,580 --> 00:04:56,180 draws a bit over half the power, in line with the 5060TI 8G that AMD positions it against. 54 00:04:56,180 --> 00:05:02,660 And in combuster, our card seems to be right in line with the 5060TI 8G, but interestingly, 55 00:05:02,660 --> 00:05:05,900 the story is a bit different in F124. 56 00:05:05,900 --> 00:05:14,860 In this racing game, AMD's latest pulls an average 174W with a maximum spike of 225W. 57 00:05:14,860 --> 00:05:20,780 By comparison, the 5060TI 8G averages around 121W. 58 00:05:20,780 --> 00:05:24,420 We don't know if this behavior will show up in every game, but this is enough for us 59 00:05:24,500 --> 00:05:30,780 to recommend going for a slightly beefier power supply than the 450W unit that AMD recommends. 60 00:05:30,780 --> 00:05:35,500 Thankfully, this is still relatively low power draw, meaning that these cards are pretty 61 00:05:35,500 --> 00:05:40,820 easy to tame, and even loaded by a power virus like combuster, our cards stay both cool 62 00:05:40,820 --> 00:05:44,180 and quiet. Let's talk 1440P gaming. 63 00:05:44,180 --> 00:05:51,140 AMD claimed 6% better gaming performance than the 5060TI 8G at 1440, but looking at our 64 00:05:51,140 --> 00:05:54,700 raster results, we just don't see it. 65 00:05:54,700 --> 00:06:00,180 They score a couple of wins in LNWake 2 and Last of Us Part 1, but is it really that impressive 66 00:06:00,180 --> 00:06:05,700 of a win when NVIDIA's 8G cards can't complete the test and you just didn't submit your 67 00:06:05,700 --> 00:06:15,460 8G card on time for testing? Especially when we factor in that the 9060XT 16G trails behind the 5060TIs and honestly 68 00:06:15,460 --> 00:06:20,580 doesn't even look that stellar against the 5060 in the remainder of our games here. 69 00:06:20,620 --> 00:06:24,740 If you're wondering, by the way, about how the 5070 compares to all of this, we didn't 70 00:06:24,740 --> 00:06:29,380 retest that card for this review, so we didn't want to include stale numbers, but it's a 71 00:06:29,380 --> 00:06:33,140 little worse than the 9070 non-XT from back when we reviewed that. 72 00:06:33,140 --> 00:06:40,340 Moving on to ray tracing. Despite the massive leap in RT performance that came with RDNA4, AMD is still unable 73 00:06:40,340 --> 00:06:49,580 to match their direct NVIDIA competitors. In 1080P RT, the 9060XT falls well behind the 5060TI 8G in our suite of tests, which 74 00:06:49,580 --> 00:06:55,140 is sad, but what really jumped off the charts to me is NVIDIA's embarrassing loss here 75 00:06:55,140 --> 00:07:00,260 with the 5060 not even able to keep up with the 4060TI. 76 00:07:00,260 --> 00:07:03,380 I thought they had improved the ray tracing on Blackwell. 77 00:07:03,380 --> 00:07:10,060 What the heck happened? And in 1440P RT Cyberpunk, things don't look much better. 78 00:07:10,060 --> 00:07:14,660 Maybe we can find a happier story in productivity? No, not really. 79 00:07:14,660 --> 00:07:19,700 I mean, the nice thing about having 16 gigs of memory, if you do, is that it allows you 80 00:07:19,700 --> 00:07:26,940 to dip your toes into AI without being as limited. I mean, look at how all the 8Gig cards fumble as we load up a larger model. 81 00:07:26,940 --> 00:07:31,740 But even with 16 gigs, AMD isn't even close to NVIDIA in terms of performance in our machine 82 00:07:31,740 --> 00:07:36,580 learning tests. It turns out, haha, software support is important. 83 00:07:36,580 --> 00:07:40,300 And that only becomes more clear as we move beyond AI to Blender. 84 00:07:40,300 --> 00:07:45,540 This goes brrrrrrr and HIP goes brrrrrrrrr. 85 00:07:45,540 --> 00:07:49,860 Adjusting focus to content creation, though, we see big improvements genover gen from AMD 86 00:07:49,860 --> 00:07:54,140 and they even beat NVIDIA in DaVinci Resolve, though they trailed behind in the more popular 87 00:07:54,140 --> 00:07:58,400 Premiere Pro benchmark. Alright, well that's the performance. 88 00:07:58,400 --> 00:08:01,740 So this has been a big load of meh so far. 89 00:08:01,740 --> 00:08:08,280 But hey, getting 16 gigs of VRAM and 5060TI-ish performance for a theoretical $30 discount? 90 00:08:08,280 --> 00:08:15,560 That's something. It's just, it's tough to justify the $50 jump over the 5060, whose price is tough to justify 91 00:08:15,560 --> 00:08:23,640 over a kick in the groin. I mean, to AMD's credit here, FSR4 has made huge strides, meaning that other than multi-frame 92 00:08:23,640 --> 00:08:29,480 gen, which a lot of you aren't that into, AMD has near parity on most of the features 93 00:08:29,480 --> 00:08:34,560 that gamers care about. Even their video encoder is almost as good as NVENC these days. 94 00:08:34,560 --> 00:08:39,440 They just need to work on third-party support for all of this stuff. 95 00:08:39,440 --> 00:08:44,960 So at the end of the day then, I don't know, I'm left kind of frustrated. 96 00:08:44,960 --> 00:08:49,720 In recent years, AMD has slowly but surely caught up to NVIDIA in terms of performance 97 00:08:49,720 --> 00:08:54,280 and features, but they've also caught up in terms of their crappy behavior. 98 00:08:54,280 --> 00:09:01,600 Last gen, the 7600XT had 16 gigs and the 7600 non-XT had 8 gigs of VRAM. 99 00:09:01,640 --> 00:09:05,720 It was super easy to tell what you were buying from the name of the product. 100 00:09:05,720 --> 00:09:10,440 This time around, they've lumped both cards together with the sameXT name, and then at 101 00:09:10,440 --> 00:09:15,480 the same time, as far as we can tell, intentionally made it more difficult for media to review 102 00:09:15,480 --> 00:09:19,280 the 8 gig version, which could lead to consumer confusion. 103 00:09:19,280 --> 00:09:25,280 So AMD, your commitment to the press words, kind of meaningless at this point. 104 00:09:25,280 --> 00:09:29,560 And speaking of meaningless promises, you still haven't managed to get your previous 105 00:09:29,560 --> 00:09:34,480 cards into the sales channel anywhere near MSRP, which means you've effectively given 106 00:09:34,480 --> 00:09:45,440 away any credibility that you might have had there too. So bottom line, if you have 350 bucks or more to spend, you can buy a 9060XT, I guess, but 107 00:09:45,440 --> 00:09:49,160 I wouldn't recommend the 8 gig one if you want to get a longer lifespan out of your 108 00:09:49,160 --> 00:09:54,680 card or you want to upgrade your monitor to 1440p, and whichever one you choose, just 109 00:09:54,760 --> 00:09:59,920 don't smugly tell yourself that you're supporting the good guy, because AMD's actions speak 110 00:09:59,920 --> 00:10:04,880 much louder than their words, and they seem content to just draft behind NVIDIA, both 111 00:10:04,880 --> 00:10:10,000 in good ways and bad, rather than aggressively jump out in front to delight PC gamers who 112 00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:13,800 don't have 800 plus dollars to spend on a GPU. 113 00:10:13,800 --> 00:10:21,120 AMD, this was kind of your shot. NVIDIA is super distracted at the moment, and unless you do more, your GPU division is going 114 00:10:21,200 --> 00:10:26,320 to continue to only resonate with a small niche of users who don't mind owning a punching 115 00:10:26,320 --> 00:10:31,000 bag. And I would deserve to be punched in the bag if I didn't segue to our sponsor. 116 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:35,520 If you guys enjoyed this video, go check out our review of the 9070 and 9070XT, it dives 117 00:10:35,520 --> 00:10:39,120 a little bit deeper into the architectural changes with our DNA4.